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27 April, 2013

Yet Another Good Game Bites the Dust

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Looks like either the money-grubbers at Disney pulled the license for the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game from Margaret Weis Productions without warning, or MWP couldn’t make the reup on the license work out since they couldn’t move enough product (I’m guessing it was a combination — they couldn’t pay for a more expensive license and Disney just pulled the license, complete with a cease and desist for selling product they were authorized to sell, although now you have until April 30 to snag all the material at Drive Thru RPG.) MWP is trying to make amends by crediting pre-orders 150% the cost of the books they aren’t going to be getting; I think that’s a stand up move.

It’s a sad day as, while I’ve not been a fan of the Cortex Plus direction the company took, Marvel was a superb game the mechanics of which really captured the flavor of a comic like none of the other, in my opinion. On the up side, MWP has an upcoming Firefly RPG. Let’s hope they can keep the license.

 

23 April, 2013

Adventure Seed: Serenity or Firefly RPG

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Here’s an idea that I used for a one-shot recently. It is, essentially, the movie Deep Rising tweaked for the Firefly universe. (It’s what I call a terrible-but-fun movie; have a look.)

The players are one of two groups — either the ship crew of a smallish freighter like White Lightning from the supplement Six-Shooters & Spaceships, or a group of mercenaries that have been hired to rob then destroy a fancy new passenger liner. If they are the freighter crew, they don’t know the actual score — they’ve been hired on a “if the cash is there, we do not care” basis, simply running the gun bunnies to point X in the Black and back. The mercs know the full score but are leaving the transpo guys in the dark for OPSEC.

The crew is hired one of the border moons or planets — whatever is easiest for your campaign. For a one-shot, you could have the action start on Persephone with Badger fronting the deal, or on Beaumonde with Mingo and Fanty. They’ve got a hard run out to a location in space that is a bit off the shipping lanes, but still reasonable. If they snoop about the cargo, they’ll find the gear the mercs brought with them includes 4 200 lb. (d6W) anti-ship (spacecraft scale) missiles with a launcher rig that can be mag-locked to the hull. What do they need with artillery?

A few minutes out from being able to find the liner, they should encounter some kind of debris — a lifeboat or shuttle — that they’ll hit before they eventually find the liner. Or if they have the usual cheap boat with bad maintenance, just hit them with some kind of failure. For whatever reason, they need safe harbor on the liner and won’t be able to run for it right off.

For the liner,  you could use El Dorado from the core rules or the passenger liner from SS&S; the bigger, the better — adrift and apparently on emergency power. The mercenaries knew this would be the case — they have an inside man (the owner of the thing) aboard who sabotaged her. The plan was simple: the ship suffers a catastrophic failure and after the passengers are offloaded, the valuables are pilfered, the ship destroyed, and the massive insurance claim filed. (The ship is so expensive, they’re running at a loss, even with a full-manifest.)

When they go aboard, however, there’s no one to be found. There’s indications of a hell of a fight — blood, bullet holes, but no bodies. They have to hit the vault, the engineering section’s machine shop to get what they need to fix their ship. Split ’em up. Lose a few NPCs who can disappear with some blood-curdling scream on radio. Eventually, they’ll have to find the bodies of the crew and passengers (maybe some still alive to make it more terrible) in a hold. There’s also something else, something worse — REAVERS!

There should be a lot of them, and it should turn into a run & gun, cat & mouse game to get back to their ship and get the hell out of there. Once they are off the liner, they’ll have to run for it, because the reaver ship that dropped the boarding party is coming back.

Tweak as you need to make it work for your game — change the scale of the opposition or the liner to suit your purposes — but it should be a good horror/action adventure for you to run.

 

15 April, 2013

Vote For the Black Campbell

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Stuffer Shack is doing their 2013 RPG Site of the Year contest and The Black Campbell is in the running. Voting for the site is on Wednesday, so  for all you folks that follow the blog and like the material, give us a vote! Tell your friends! Annoy their friends!

 

 

13 April, 2013

In the Thick of It: Handling Large Scale Battles

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There are a few game systems that do a nice job of handling large scale battles, and the participation of characters in them, but not all RPGs — particularly those that focus more on character and story — deal with the different scales of a Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica-style capital ships, fighters, people running around shooting stuff all at the same time kind of action, especially when you have characters operating at all of these levels.

We’ll use the latest Battlestar Galactica session I ran last week as an example (with some augmentation here and there to illustrate some points…) We have finally reached the events of the miniseries in our campaign, and the characters have replaced those of the show for this iteration of the story (search this site for “after action report” and you should be able to find postings that will explain more on this.) Last night was the breakout from Ragnar Anchorage, which meant going toe-to-toe with the Cylons. As in the series, Galactica — this time with the aid of other surviving military units — have to scatter the Cylons and hold the line over the anchorage while the civilian vessels jump to safety. This means coordinated capital ship action (one of the PC, Commander Pindarus, running that), Viper on Raider action with PCs flying the vipers, and we would have had another character aiding in damage control in the fight, had they attended that evening.

Battles in BSG, Star Wars, and Star Trek often take hours, not minutes, or the seconds of personal combat in many games. To capture the difference in scales, I suggest that at the start of combat, the capital level stuff goes first — battlestar and basestar exchange their initial salvos, and any character involved in gunnery or command of the vessel, or electronic warfare gets to take their actions for the round. Next goes the fighter/vehicle-level action, then the personal-level stuff. Now to show longer time frames of battles for such a fight, I typically allow the personal and vehicle scale players to have another two or three rounds to show the speed with which their combat or actions take before returning to the capital-level attacks. (In the case of the damage control stuff, I would most likely call these extended tests and have them roll at the same time as the capital level actions.)

Here Galactica launched her fighters, set up her flak barrier with the point defense, but before she could start wailing on the nearest basestar, they were hit by a missile salvo from the same. (They lost initiative.) Galactica returned fire relatively ineffectually for the first round. Next, the CAG rolled for the fighter groups. Here I was assuming his pilot and initiative counted for the vipers vs. the Cylons. They won, he rolled brilliantly for the first round of engagement and they splash a bunch of toasters and only lose one guy. The other pilot character got to duke it out one on one with a raider — she’s a pilot, it’s her schtick — always let your players get a chance to strut their character’s stuff, if you can help it.  The viper squadrons rolled again, this time only a few toasters go down and no vipers. A third go-round for pilots and blasting Cylons.

Galactica got initiative on the next round and did well, pasting the basestar hard. However the viper squadronds do almost nothing and the Cylons damage 12 of the vipers in the round. They break through and start a run toward the EW raptors, to try and clear the jamming the Colonials are using to keep the missiles from damaging the battlestar and civilian ships. The next two rounds are viper squadrons and pilot characters dogfighting with raiders.

The next capital round, the Cylons are done playing. Galactica gets a radiological alarm and the Cylons fire a nuke. The EW raptors jam it and keep the ship safe. Finally the civilian ships are all out. The next two rounds are the pilots attempting their combat landings before the ship jumps to safety.

Now originally, I had planned for a Cylon agent to have been activated in Galactica during the breakout and there to have been a fight between a marine PC and the bad guy that would have been resolved like a normal fight at the same time as the viper combat — three rounds of action to every one for Galactica and other capital ships. It would have happened in the CIC and anything that distracted the command staff, or injured them, etc. would have had an effect on the way Galactica was fighting during her rounds.

You can experiment with the time between capital ship rounds, but I find three is enough to allow for fast paced action for the characters in teh thick of things, but not so long that the commander and/or other characters involved in shiphandling get bored.

 

9 April, 2013

Player vs. Player: Handling Conflict at the Table

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Good drama, hence good gaming, relies on interpersonal conflict — the interplay between differing goals and ideals makes for a great session. Unfortunately, this can sometimes lead to player conflict when those at the gaming table lose sight of the difference between themselves and their role in the game. This happened when I was a young gamer; the characters in the game came to an impasse and as their argument superheated, it turned into anger at the other player. Once we realized what was happening, we were able to distance ourselves from the characters and sort the matter.

Other times, existing animosity spills into the game, with players acting to spite or antagonize the other. This can make for good gaming, but likely than not, it slams the breaks on the action and creates friction that can ruin a session or break the back of a gaming group. Sometimes, a player is angry or upset over something completely disconnected from play, but the game becomes a surrogate for taking out their aggression on the actual problem. We saw this with a player whose brother and sister-in-law were going through a divorce. He took the break-up hard and his characters suddenly took a disturbing misogynist turn, which brought them into conflict with other characters, and vicariously, female players in the group. The approach here was direct: she told him to knock it off.

So how do you fix interpersonal conflict between players? There are as many routes to conflict resolution as there are people, and every situation can require a different approach. Sometimes it’s as simple as calling their attention to the matter. If you are lucky, you have adults at the game table and you can reason with them. Pull them aside (I prefer one at a time) and have a quick chat. Ask them what’s up, that their actions are being disruptive or suggest that maybe the offending players get together and work out their issue (whatever it might be.) See if there’s something you can do to aid in resolving the matter while at the table (Don’t get in the middle of their issues — they won’t thank you for it and now you are part of the problem.) Sometimes, however, a strong “grow the fuck up!” works.

If other players are complaining about the situation (and they rarely do it while the offenders are present, I find), you could take a session to have everyone talk it out. (A bit soft and huggy-squeezy for me…) Sometimes it’s as simple as letting them know they’re being a jerk — the goof ol’ yellow card/red card can work here. You are already refereeing the game, it’s not much of a stretch to extend that role to the players, as well. They start being a dick, you give ’em a yellow card; they’re being truly offensive, red card and maybe some time away from the table to gather themselves together.

The most extreme cases require the same response, and it’s one that a lot of GMs are loathe to use because finding good gamers can be hard: kick them out of the group. Simply put, if you have people that spoil the fun for the rest, you’re better off excising the offenders. “But their characters is integral to the group/plot/whatever…” Not enough so to risk the whole group blowing apart. Turn their characters into NPCs, let them know they are welcome back when they can comport themselves like adults. (Which is ironic, when you consider you are pretending, like when you were a kid…)

Ultimately, dealing with people and conflict is a delicate art, and you will have to feel out the situation for yourself. Just know it’s okay to sometimes use the cudgel, rather than the carrot.

[This post was inspired by and is a response to a similar post on Runesligner’s blog, Casting Shadows. Go check it out. Scott]

 

8 April, 2013

After Action Report: Battlestar Galactica RPG

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This is one of those game session reviews that might help — as with the last part — to show how you can take an established universe, a licensed product like Battlestar Galactica  or Star Trek, and make it your own while retaining elements of the original material. Last week saw part two of our version of the miniseries. (Recap of the first part.) Many of the same elements as the show were there, but with the necessary differences to make the game setting our own:

The ship made it to Ragnar Anchorage, but before going in to dock, they made contact through a series of repeater buoys to the crew of the station. (There’s a lot of important materiel in the eye of a storm on a gas giant…they’re going to have a maintenance and control staff.) They have to convince the XO of the station that they have clearance and a need to take materiel from the station, but finally get permission to dock.

The new president, former interim defense minister (and Commander Pindarus’ father), pulls together the rump government he has — Education Minister Laura Roslin, a quorum member from Picon, a Peoples’ Assemblywoman, Aaron Doral — the Deputy Director for Public Education that was in charge of turning Galactica into a museum, and the Colonial Budget Officer chairman (a new PC named Malcolm Jones) together, along with Commander Pindarus to decide what they do next. They need intelligence, and as Roslin points out, there’s a lot of shipping caught in the crossfire that need led to safety. There was a long bit of haggling over what to do, with the commander, quorum member, and Doral favoring finding the remaining elements of the Fleet and conducting a counterassault. They’re on the ropes and they’ll never be stronger. Roslin and the assemblywoman favor running with the civilian ships. But if they can “save” even one Colony world, they are in a better position to rebuild than if they run and have to start from scratch; the commander points out that technology backslide would probably take them another 2000 years to get back to where they are now.

The president decides to send raptors and shuttles to find ships, but more to collect intelligence on the progress of the battle. (At this point, they think they’ve lost maybe 80% of the fleet, max. — so 24-25 ships left.) While all this is going on, they dock with Ragnar, and the XO goes in with PC, SGT Cadmus, and a bunch of work gangs to load up the ship on munitions, medical supplies, food, and anything else not nailed down. The XO of the station is a sickly man named COL Conoy. He’s dodgy and takes the XO off to do the paperwork for the supplies — there could be more units coming and he wants to know what they take so he can supply others — but it’s a ruse. The man tries to kill the XO, but is stopped by the sergeant. They injure him badly but don’t kill him. While the PC wanted to, the XO says to the effect, “how we treat our prisoners is a reflection on us…and they need intelligence.”

Conoy (a humanoid Cylon like his counterpart int he series) came aboard yesterday as a crew replacement. He was able to frag the CIC of the station with an anti-personnel mine and secure most of the crew in a section of the station and vent the air. We left that subplot for the night with the SAR crews re-pressurizing the section and hoping to find survivors.

Meanwhile, the battlestar Minerva jumps in over Ragnar. They find out the Cylons have lost about 50% of their assault force after the older ships got in the fight, and the newer ones that figure out the CNP was the culprit for their technical troubles restarted their computers and physically cut their networks. But they’re still outnumbered, and intelligence shows they have much fewer ships than they thought. Most of the unaccounted for vessels are part of the expeditionary forces — they could be anywhere. Minerva and her escort Cygnus are in bad shape; the Cylons keep finding them, and quickly — even when they jump. The crew realizes they are being tracked and suspect that the ships are tagged some way. They figure out the Cylons must be tapping either navigation or DRADIS and find a device on the bottom of the DRADIS console they thought was part of the museum network.

Realizing they are weaker than they thought, the idea of running is the stronger argument…but run where? Another thing they considered: there are almost certainly Cylon agents in the fleet, and seeing the condition of Conoy, the commander realizes if they can stay in the storm at Ragnar long enough, they’ll be able to suss out who the bad guys are. But how long do they have to wait? We left it there for the night.

So the basic narrative of the miniseries and the show is mostly intact: the Cylons have attacked, the apocalypse is upon the characters, and they have to decide if they stay and fight, or run for it. Not being constrained to a four hour miniseries, we were able to explore a few issues in more depth: the arguments over stay or go were much more heated and for a while there they were looking at some variant of “find a safe spot for the civilians, then go secure the space over Aerilon [the planet with the least damage] and hold the line.” The characters are more affected by their losses, with the pair of pilot PCs being nearly unable to function. The commander is angry and wants to hit the Cylons hard, but he’s being rational…they can only do so much. Their knowledge of the human Cylons and the effects of Ragnar have them using the setting in a manner that the characters in the show did not and could lead to a fleet that is less likely to have Cylons in their midst. This gives the characters hope that they might be able to ignore that element of the show.

More realistically, there are surviving military units in disarray, but still fighting. However, the fog of war is keeping the PCs from knowing the whole story, or they have to act on incomplete or faulty intelligence. They know how many ships they have, but not the number of survivors: it could be 20,000, it could be 60,000. Keeping the characters in the dark makes their jobs harder, but also amps up the central emotional queues of this particular setting: uncertainty, paranoia, and fear.

 

8 April, 2013

New For James Bond: 007 RPG — Motorcycle Armor

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…and not the usual “ouch, I fell down and hope the armor keeps me from breaking something” armor, Colombian clothier Miguel Caballero has a new line of ballistic and crash protection for motorcyclists…

Miguel-Caballero-RoadPower

This armor provides -4DC and soaks -1WL of damage (-2WL for impact involving a motorcycle crash.) It is heavy — the jacket, pants, and a good helmet mean about 25-30 lbs. of weight being carried. The gear looks like normal motorcycle wear, if a bit bulkier, and is CON -3 to be spotted by opponents. Cost: $5000

 

30 March, 2013

After Action Report: Battlestar Galactica RPG

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This week’s Battlestar Galactica game brought us up to the events in the miniseries and might help for those looking to run a campaign in a licensed or established setting where you want to use elements from the original work, but cut out on your own.

One of the nice things about Galactica‘s universe is the idea of a cyclical history — a Wheel of Time — in which different people across time act out roles in a story that is told over and over again with variations on the main theme. In this case, the player characters have replaces those main characters from the Moore version, and many of the trappings of the same setting are in place, but tweaked for this retelling of the story. Instead of Adama, we have Commander Pindarus — a younger man, but with many of the same traits. Apollo is replaced by “Lucky”, the commander’s brother in law. Roslin is still around, but she is replaced by Pindarus’ father, the acting defense minister as president after the Fall of the Colonies. Starbuck is still present, but many of the traits that would go to her in later seasons have been moved onto Lucky — he has prophetic visions and may or may not be an oracle. The XO is Athena — a tip of the hat to the old series — and she is a young, hyper-intelligent, tactical genius, but not a people person. Tyrol and other background characters are around as NPCs, but all have been tweaked for this iteration of the story.

We still have Galactica being decommissioned and retired. This is on Armistice Day — a major holiday during an election season. Half the fleet is on leave. The politicians are scattered around the Colonies politicking. Old man Pindarus and several minor government officials are on the ship for the decommissioning ceremony and opening of the museum. The ship is undermanned, many of the officers in non-essential positions having been transferred (like their gunnery officers…after all, she’s offloaded all but her point defense munitions, and only the PDS and a squadron of fighters are still with the ship to prevent piracy of the craft.) Dipper, the CAG, is taking the last of their fighter squadrons to Caprica, escorting the MinDef and other officials after they leave Galactica.

We did the reveal of the attacks differently. One of the PCs is watching the Armistice Day parade from Picon (17 minute delay) when the newscasters start talking about the fireworks display the fleet is putting on. Minutes later, they get the first reports of a fight between the Colonials and unidentified forces they think might be the Cylons. For the rest of the session, they keep getting dribs and drabs of information — all more catastrophic than the last. They did not abuse their out-of-game knowledge about the Command Navigation Program, figuring out the fleet was being hacked, but not knowing how. Pindarus (the CO) pulls the network that the museum set up on the ship, just to be safe, and orders his father’s ship back to Galactica.

About that time, Adar’s surrender comes through, but the Cylons ignore it. More reports of ships lost and nuclear attacks on the various worlds. The PC that had seen the initial attacks on the news, and who has all their family on Picon near the major military base, hears of the nuking of the city. Lots of characters angst.

Then the Cylons find them and Dipper takes the squadron to meet them, only to be shut down and destroy as in the miniseries. The PCs Lucky (in the MinDef’s old MK II from the war) and Billboard (whose MK VII had computer issues earlier and had to be restored to factory settings…no CNP) rush to meet the four Cylons. A good dogifght ensued and the Cylons were splashed. Shortly after the Case Orange reponse making Pindarus senior the president comes in.

They’ve queried a few of the military repositories and found them all under attack but one — Ragnar. They jump to the planet to rearm, then get into the fight or aid in rescue operations. Their first priority is also t get raptors out and gain intelligence they don’t have from the various colonies — at this point, they know they are losing, but the fight is not lost…

The night ended there. The main elements of the miniseries are present, but twisted here and there to provide better chances for the characters to have an impact. Overall the night’s pacing was good, and we wound up running much later than expected. Can’t wait to see what they do next…

 

27 March, 2013

The Collecting Bug: Games I’ll (Probably) Never Play

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Over the years, I’ve bought a ton (no, really — think how heavy books are) of game books for stuff I either never played, or which was used for a short period. But just because you aren’t playing that particular game doesn’t mean you can steal from those game books to inform your campaigns.

The first class of these admittedly bad purchases are the games I’ll never play. One of the big white elephants for gaming (I think) is the Star Trek universe. It’s wonderfully well fleshed out (except for the Federation itself, which is only a sketch of the society) and the background buy-in is easy for players. Pull a screen cap of the bridge and other sets, the costumes are well known to even non-Trek fans, and so are many of the ship designs. We all know the “look” of Trek. But I found the alien/social commentary of the week doesn’t translate very well into a game universe. Partly, I just don’t think in those terms; partly, I don’t view the way Starfleet works as realistic enough for a game.

What do I mean by that? Some things you can give a pass on a TV show. Battlestar Galactica never explains the FTL engines. Why not? Because it’s not importnat to the story…but for a game, where they characters might need to know why their engines aren’t working, or how the artificial gravity works as a tactical element, that level of handwavium can get in the way. There’s a metric butt-ton of handwavium, improbnium, and silly-anium in Trek. But I like the Decipher and Last Unicorn Games rules sets and wanted to run them — hence, the Trek campaign.

Similarly, I have all the Eclipse Phase and Transhuman Space stuff, but it’s unlikely these games — or a hybrid of the two — will ever make it out of “development hell”. Another is Jovian Chronicles. All have the same problem: I love the level of pre-generated detail, but like Trek or BSG or other licensed products, the detail is a double-edged sword. The built-in metastory has a tendency to color the material, and unless the GM is willing to scrap chunks of the campaign world, these details can gum up the works. You have similar issues with GMs who create massive, Tolkien-esque histories for their fantasy worlds, then are shocked you didn’t read the 80 page campaign guide they sent you in Dropbox (because it would fit in your friggin’ email box.) Gutting the established canon can be harder than creating your own world out of whole cloth because in the latter case, you only have to build what you need for the campaign and can build as you go. (However, I have a gamer who is into the big robot scene, so that might act as a catalyst to eventually bring a JC campaign about. Only took 20 years…)

Other games that won’t get played include the Napoleonic period Duty and Honor and Beat to Quarters. I like the rules and the setting, but I doubt I can sell it to the gaming group. Same with the excellent Dr. Who RPG that Cubicle 7 has put out. (Disclaimer: I’ve done a bunch of work for C7 on their Victoriana line, but havent’ worked on Who…it’s just that good a set of rules.) I’m not likely to run The One Ring, but it was too beautiful not to buy. (It’s the same reason, I bought The Lord of the Rings RPG Decipher put out.) I have Mouse Guard but one of the players has shown opposition to the idea of playing it.

Some are nostalgia buys. I’m not likely to use the old Mayfiar Games DC Heroes system for supers (if I ever get to run a campaign…) as I was impressed enough with the Cortex Plus Marvel Heroic Roleplaying to swap to that. I wouldn’t mind having all the Mongoose rereleases of Traveler — not to play it, but because it was my first sci-fi game.)

A second class of “crap I won’t play” is the game books bought to augment other campaigns. The Transhuman Space was originally bought to enhance or kludge together with the Eclipse Phase game…then I started looking at the EP rules and went cross-eyed. (I suspect FATE or the new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying rules would work well with the Eclipse Phase universe.) Aces & Eights is a cool set of mechanics, but it was purchased more as campaign prep for any Old West adventures that might crop up in the Victorian-period games that were a staple up of our group until recently. Castle Falkenstein was originally bought to augment Space: 1889 but eventually usurped the latter as the rules set we were using…with the Space: 1889 setting. The d20 Stargate SG-1 RPG materials were bought to run, but I hate d20 (in all its flavors) so much that it became background material that was ported into the James Bond rules set. (It worked surprisingly well.) I’m not a big fan of Savage Worlds as a set of mechanics; I think you can get a similar rules flavor with better mechanics out of classic Cortex. But I have the Slipstream RPG book because I wanted to run a Flash Gordon-like campaign for a while.

So why collect games, other than to read through interesting settings and rules, and they forget them? Because I never forget them. I love the idea of the shot clock from Aces & Eights and have thought about bringing the mechanic into a Victorian-period game…but I don’t know how well it would run. I’ve borrowed ideas from Jovian Chronicles that made it into the current Battlestar Galactica game. Transhumanist ideas dominated the Star Trek campaign toward the end, and I borrowed heavily from the material I’d bought. I’ve stolen and modified rules mechanics from one system and fused them into other game rules (most notably, I cobbled together a set of combat rules for Castle Falkenstein that were ripped and modified from the excellent Lace & Steel.) The idea of weaknesses having soem kind of mechanic impact, or as a trigger for plot/hero/style/story points migrated from Cortex and Ubiquity to house rules for the Bond system.

You never know what you’re going to use, or play, so there. Collecting is also easier and cheaper to do than ever, especially on the nostalgia buys — many of the old games are on .pdf, either through sites like DriveThru or as torrents (Don’t pirate kids!) and you can have a massive library of games on your computer or tablet. I’ve got a stunning amount of indie and old games on my iPad and living on my backup drive and Dropbox.

 

27 March, 2013

Gamemastering…A Disease of Creativity

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I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.

–William Carlos Williams

I’ve often felt this way about writing. I’ve given it up several times, due to work or family constraints. I chose a field in academia that was a writer’s field — history is a literary genre, not a social science — so I could feed the beast. No matter how many times I stop writing, I’m still writing; I might be blocking out scenes in my mind that are disconnected from any real narrative, sketching out ideas for a world for a story, coming up with characters and plots…

Much of this effort eventually works its way into gaming. I’m often the gamemaster for my groups, more due to my ability to come up with adventures and campaigns on the fly than any desire to be top dog. (Every time someone offers to run, it breaks down after a session or two due to their schedules, etc.) In many ways, GMing is a substitute for writing — I don’t need as much time to think, plot, and write as I do for a game, so it’s only logical a lot of the ideas I have migrate to the games we’re playing.

And like writing, gamemastering is a disease. When relaxing, doing chores, or riding my motorcycle, I find myself blocking out scenes, what an NPC’s reaction to events might be, what hooks and surprises I can spring on the players. As with writing, or perhaps because it is a surrogate for writing, game preparation takes up much of my downtime processing cycles.

When I play in other games, I find myself deconstructing the GM style, plot, and characters — much like I do when watching a movie or reading a book. Are there things the GM is doing that I could incorporate? Are there things they are doing I should avoid? I consider if the system that was used adequately pushed the story or genre, or was a hinderance to play. Would another system work better? Would the game mechanics of the game being played work well for the stuff I’m running?

It doesn’t matter if I’ll never run the game. I’ve had ideas for a Jovian Chronicles game for years, and much of that material migrated into the current Battlestar Galactica game because I’m unlikely to ever run JC. The politics of the BSG campaign borrow heavily from ideas for a James Bond RPG campaign that has never really gotten off the ground because it’s dark and seriously morally ambiguous — enough I thought the fun would be stripped out, but all the material worked well in the current BSG game because it is stripped of the immediacy of current events and politics. Similarly, there have been books and short stories that I will never write, or publish, but have informed game campaigns. My six year run of Star Trek was one of these that started as an idea for a sci-fi novel (or series of), but worked much better as a game setting.

I know there are players who write up characters, even when they aren’t in a game because it’s fun and it’s a means of creative outlet. Like an abscess, this creative impulse must have out.

[This piece was inspired by Don Mappin’s latest post on Gnome Stew. Scott]

 

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